


brute heart

by raisuki (inthegripofahurricane)



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Character Study, Eren Yeager-centric, F/M, Gen, Implied pedophilia, Spoilers, Surreal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:42:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28294014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inthegripofahurricane/pseuds/raisuki
Summary: In the moments preceding his death, electrical signals sizzle through Eren Yeager's brain, moments of his life flashing before his eyes, becoming, at times, indistinguishable from Grisha's.Loosely based off the poem 'Daddy' by Sylvia Plath.
Relationships: Mikasa Ackerman/Eren Yeager, Mikasa Ackerman/Jean Kirstein, if you squint
Comments: 10
Kudos: 35





	brute heart

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fic that's been sitting waiting for me to finish it since July or August, lmao. It's based off one of my all time favourite poems, Daddy by Sylvia Plath. It's a bit experimental, but I hope you enjoy.  
> This poem also has some pretty heavy imagery, particularly relating to fascism and nazism. If you don't care for that sort of thing, I suggest you skip.

* * *

_You do not do, you do not do_  
_Any more, black shoe_  
_In which I have lived like a foot_  
_For thirty years, poor and white,_  
_Barely daring to breathe or Achoo._

* * *

It’s a summer evening, the kind during which syrupy light pools in corners, the shadows long and frail. You sit watching a puppet show during the local festival; the story is simple, the kind involving damsels in distress, overpowered, righteous heroes (the brave Survey Corps, of course, in service of the king) and villains (titans, naturally).  
It is the type of story catered to children, perhaps vaguely propagandistic in nature, although you’re not old enough to even understand what that means. This is before Shiganshina fell, before you’d killed a man for yourself, before, even, Armin drew open the book smuggled in by his parents.

Right now, this is the best thing in the world.

These are the stories you’ll comfort yourself with years from now, in which the world is so neatly divided in two, the righteous and the wicked: a perfect world void of humanity and its pesky nuance. 

The man holding the titan puppet roars theatrically, and all the children squeal, half in fear and in morbid delight. 

Once years have passed, you’ll look back on this warmly; a time when things were so much simpler, a time before everything had to change, before you had to change. A time before any of you had to change, and now you’re dead, or dying, at the very least, you can look back on it with relative objectivity, at least, you think you can. Of course, there were the teachers, always keeping you behind for answering back, the taller, larger boys who picked on you. You would have liked to toss a rock at one of their heads, had you been in a different mood, but for now, you’re happy, and for once, you don’t need to.

You squirm in your mother’s lap and it feels real. But this is a memory from a time long gone, and almost all of these people are ten years dead. The smell of sweet buns wafts past, and you grab onto a strand of your mother’s dark hair. This is a world that is demonstrably gone, dead, forcibly taken, and you? You are in the process of dying too. 

* * *

_Daddy, I have had to kill you._  
_You died before I had time——_  
_Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,_  
_Ghastly statue with one gray toe_  
_Big as a Frisco sea_ l

* * *

Blue skies, unpolluted and clear, stretch before you, while grass, damp with dew—you can understand why they called this island paradise. 

You’ve been walking, stumbling, tracing the strange markings engraved in your face. Ahead of you, the world seems to stretch out in his glory, and you are alone. 

This is freedom, isn’t it? A world devoid of people, free for you and your friends to explore without being bothered—by human or titan. 

You collapse into the grass and lie back, you can’t help but laugh, because it’s funny, really, in the way only tragedy can be. You are alone. _You are alone_. For a while you stretch out and you can’t help but laugh.

Eventually your peace is interrupted by the sound of hooves thundering towards you. You half open your eye, get quickly to your feet, and notice a man staring down from atop a fine gray horse. His hair is still thick and full, and he looks far younger, but you recognise him, nonetheless. Your old instructor. 

“How did you get out here?” He asks in disbelief. “You can’t be here.”

And there they are, painted on the back of his jacket: the wings of freedom. 

* * *

_And a head in the freakish Atlantic_  
_Where it pours bean green over blue_  
_In the waters off beautiful Nauset._  
_I used to pray to recover you._  
_Ach, du._

* * *

Not much has ever come naturally to you.

Not the 3D manoeuvring gear, not using your blades, certainly not anything academic. Perhaps, if there was one thing that did, it was hand-to-hand combat, although you were by no means wonderfully naturally talented, and your abilities had only sharpened through frequent fights as a child (and as a teenager, too). Everybody else had at least something they seemed to naturally excel in; Armin was always brilliant in the classroom, Jean’s 3D manoeuvring skills were near unparalleled; Annie, as tiny as she was, could flip a grown man twice over. Sasha’s intuition had saved their necks more times than you could count. And Mikasa was… well, Mikasa.

But you’d been blessed with no such natural talent and had gone through eighteen years of life with a predisposition towards mediocrity. Hell, you’d only even learned to read properly at the mortifying age of thirteen, after having spent the first few months of training too embarrassed to ask for help. 

That wasn’t the typical, adolescent angst speaking either, nor was it self-pity. It was just the truth, one with which you’ve long since made peace. Besides, you graduated in the top-five, didn’t you? Along with three titan shifters with prior military training and a fucking superhuman. And that was because of your perseverance; your stupid self-belief that had followed you all your life; the belief that what you were doing was right—to rid the world of titans. To avenge your mother. 

At least there was one thing had always come naturally to you—and that was how you felt. You were never blessed with Mikasa or Levi’s stoicism; your emotions always had free reign over your features and when you were annoyed, your mouth contorted downwards without any conscious effort; when you were upset, you cried—there was no mediator. It had gotten you into trouble again and again—when teachers would complain of a persistent ‘attitude’, and, in more hushed tones, a level of emotional intensity that made people uncomfortable. 

Both your mother and father had made efforts to quell this intensity; your mother chided you for your bluntness, although she danced around the issue with more grace than your father, who simply told you that you were just too much and it made the other children nervous, and that was why your interactions always ended with a scattering of bruises, and occasionally, a broken bone. 

It didn’t seem to bother Armin and Mikasa, or, at the very least, it didn’t bother them enough to repel them from you. Indeed, many of your memories in Shiganshina consist of them running desperately after you, following whatever trouble you’d managed to get yourself into. Mikasa in particular, seemed to spend a lot of time chasing, and subsequently catching up with him, to—

“Eren?” You’re snapped briefly out of your thoughts by Mikasa’s voice. You don’t turn around, instead, you stare out at the seas of muddied tents, fluttering slightly in the evening breeze. 

“Don’t you know you’re the enemy’s prime target? Everyone has been searching for you…”

Everyone was walking around, earlier, looking at the attractions of the Marley mainland like wide-eyed children. It was the small things that seemed to stick the most, like ice-cream, and cars…

What interested you the most were the men sitting out in chairs, smoking and complaining about the heat, and the kids weaving through crowds, joking about something distinguishable only to them, and the woman with a tired arm slung around her waist, the swell of her belly—

“Did something happen?”

“Nothing yet.”

Before too long those people would be just another statistic, one of the thousands (no, _millions_ ) crushed under the foot of a great beast, the weight of the beast so great that the bones would disintegrate, pushed into the ground until there wasn’t even enough to be a bloody pulp, nothing to identify them, just another nameless casualty in an endless cycle of violence. 

The people here were displaced because of war, now they live on the outskirts of society. They must know that really, for the majority of this country who openly despises them, it would have

been easier if they had just become another statistic, because that would be easier than being here, and taking up so much god damn _space._

“This is where those who lost their homes home from the war are living. The same as we were, and everything was stolen from us—”

* * *

_In the German tongue, in the Polish town_  
_Scraped flat by the roller_  
_Of wars, wars, wars._  
_But the name of the town is common._  
_My Polack friend_

* * *

Mikasa ends up with Jean, in the end, which makes sense, all things considered. 

Of course, they had the shared experiences of the war. They trained together, they grew up together, they mourned friends together, they shared a lot of the same values, the same desire for a comfortable life, despite it all. They both watched the world burn, even if that fire eventually flickered out, then both watched the world try to piece itself back together from the rubble, despite the hundreds of thousands of lives lost (they have you to thank for that) and in the end, they mourned you together. It was only natural, really, that Mikasa would fall into his arms by default; sooner or later she had to figure out that he was crazy about her. 

But most importantly, he is everything that you are not, and that’s what really matters. She lives with your inverse, because that is the only way she can destroy you again, now that you are gone for good. He is everything you are not, and that seemed obvious from the moment you all met. Perhaps, you have some superficial things in common—back then, in training, that is—you were both young and arrogant, but Jean was driven by his desire for comfort. Even when he became less of a coward, he fought for the hope that there would be something soft and kind at the end; the quiet happiness that came from having a wife, a child, a roof over your head, enough money to put food on the table and then some. The knowledge that one day, he’d be able to relax and put his feet up, after years of hard work. Whereas you had no concept of what was on the other side, to the point where you barely considered it. You wanted freedom so much, but you never knew what you’d do with it once you got it. 

(Spoiler alert, you never got it.)

And here it is, the cold, miserable truth of it all; back then, you played the hero so arrogantly, and there he was, the cynic, fancying himself perceptive for being a selfish bastard. The irony of it all, of course, is that in the end, he was ten times the man you ever were. He retired a distinguished, respected military commander, a father to his men; the kind of man who’d spare a child who killed one of his best friends, because he never cared about revenge. Would killing Gabi bring back Sasha? No. So it wasn’t worth discussing.   
Would flattening the world bring back your mother? Of course it wouldn’t. But you tried to do it anyway, because that was the way you always were, another cog in the machine of the cycle of violence, you hit the other children who hit you, and you did it again and again until their face was a bloody mess, not because it would achieve anything (no, it would make the situation actively worse) but because you could and because they’d hit you first. 

That fire, the kind that would eventually consume all in its path into smouldering ash, impossible to contain, destructive without any point. Destructive just because that was fire did, it kept moving forward. But she’d had enough fire for an entire lifetime, let alone twenty years, and had you lived, it would have probably consumed her too. And so, she married Jean.  
Is he jealous of you? Of course he is. Because she is still in love with you, and is there anything more mortifying than that; being cuckolded by a dead man? Occasionally, he’ll imagine you standing in the hallway, or behind a door. Sometimes you’ll even be lying between him and Mikasa, sometimes, you’ll still be a child, but most the time you’re in your white, veteran get-up, except the white cloth is barely visible beneath the dirt and dried blood. 

Sometimes he’ll acknowledge you like he would a casual acquaintance, with a nod, then he’ll continue with his day, despite the blood-caked zombie sitting in the corner of his kitchen. Other times he’ll approach you, almost as if the two of you were going to fight one last time. But when he gets close, tries to meet your eyes, he’ll realise they’re no longer there, that they’ve rotted out until there’s nothing but empty, black, maggot-infested holes. 

Once he saw you at the front door, through the window. You were sixteen and your hair was shaggy and overgrown, not yet long enough to tie up. You were in your military uniform and you were knocking at the door. He didn’t answer. 

He thinks of asking Mikasa if she ever sees you too, but then he’ll see the soft smile she gives one of their two children, the boy and the girl, when she knows they aren’t looking, and then he decides against it. Peace is fragile, and not simply the absence of war. 

* * *

_Says there are a dozen or two._  
_So I never could tell where you_  
_Put your foot, your root,_  
_I never could talk to you._  
_The tongue stuck in my jaw._

* * *

By the age of twelve, you’d learned a thing or two about starving. Hunger was something else; hunger was unpleasant, hunger gnawed at you—but starving was all consuming—it was painful. You couldn’t ignore it, only tolerate it. It had you doubled over, unable to move, or do anything really; it kept you up at night, your body beginning to eat away at itself. As time goes on, the amount of food being trickled to the refugees in Wall Rose seemed to get smaller and smaller, as if they were being forgotten about, which they were.   
It was impossible. Living in the refugee camps. At all hours there were shouts, hollers, the sounds of babies crying; anything to prevent you from going to sleep. Armin had come down with a fever, and so you’d given yesterday’s ration to him. Now there was nothing. Just the three of you with no food, Mikasa hunched over Armin’s shivering form. She mops at his brow and gives him sips of water. Suddenly, it seems, without sleeping—it’s daylight. 

You leave Mikasa to go find some food, even though each step is excruciating. You take to hunching over to alleviate it, while you weave through tents and families cram-packed together, through the stench of bodies and sweat and poverty. 

You end up, in the end, a little out of the swathes of refugee camps, near the parade of shops on the other side of the city. In your dizzy state, you hadn’t realised how far you’d come, until you were sitting on the side of the street. You despised begging, you really did, but the pangs of hunger got more and more painful with each—  
A hand on your shoulder. You look up, a for a moment you’re sure it’s your father; the man has the same dark hair, slightly outgrown, and similar glasses. You think for a second that he might have finally come back, to come and get you—but then you realise, as the man’s features come into focus, that it’s not your father at all. The face is too wide, too old, and the hair is too short.

“Are you alright?” The man asks. 

“…Hungry.” You wheeze, unable to say much else. 

People rarely took notice of the refugees. You didn’t blame them, there were just too many, if you stopped to help everyone, you’d never move forward. The man’s interest was surprising enough. He looked around. 

“Where are your parents?”

You blink up at him for a moment and say nothing. That must be answer enough. The man lets out a sigh. 

“I have some dishes that need doing at my restaurant.” He hauls you, non-too gently, to your feet. “Do those and I’ll give you a hot meal.”You nearly tumble back to the ground, you’re so weak.

The man shakes his head. 

“I’ll feed you first,” he grumbles, “but don’t try anything. I know what you refugee kids can be like…”

* * *

_It stuck in a barb wire snare._  
_Ich, ich, ich, ich,_  
_I could hardly speak._  
_I thought every German was you._  
_And the language obscene_

* * *

Are you still breathing?

Barely. 

Where are you? You’re running out of the Liberio internment zone, following the great metal sphere floating through the sky. The sky, great and expansive and infinite; that is freedom, isn’t it? The ability to stretch out into nothingness without impediment, without walls, without limitation. But unfortunately, this world is ram-packed and swarming with humanity, crammed together like sardines, with their hot, sour breath and obsessions with sex and violence. 

But you are chasing after blip regardless, Faye’s hand threaded in yours, dark hair bouncing around her face. You have the option, now, just about, to turn around and go back to the internment zone. You will your arm to move, and sure enough it rises as you expect. 

Of course, at this point, there is still the option to turn around and halt this whole disaster before it even begins. It’s easy to pick out points in the past and speculate how things would have gone had things gone differently, as an easy way to fool ourselves, but the reality is that there are greater, more powerful forces at play, far beyond your, or anyone else’s, control.  
The truth is, this was all set in stone from the beginning. 

* * *

_I have always been scared of you,_  
_With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo._  
_And your neat mustache_  
_And your Aryan eye, bright blue._  
_Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You——_

* * *

“Are you in pain?”

“Not really.”

“Let me get you some ice.”

There was a time where you’d have swatted her affections away, but you’ve since grown out of it. Contrary to popular belief, you’re not completely oblivious, at least not anymore. So, you let Mikasa fuss over you for a while, even though the pain is barely registering by now. At one point, you catch Jean looking at both of you. He looks irritated to have been caught staring, opting to scowl and look away. Perhaps if you were younger, that alone would have been invitation enough to punch him in the face, but you realise you’re far too tired and really can’t be bothered, so you just raise an eyebrow instead. 

Sasha returns with some loaves of warm bread and spiced wine. She pours a glass for everyone and tears you off half a loaf of bread, and you accept both, not realising how hungry you were. 

“God, Mikasa you’d think his leg had fallen off.” Jean mumbles, turning away from everyone. 

“I don’t want it to get stiff.”

“He’ll heal, though, won’t he?” Connie falls into a chair, mouth half-full of bread. “Like the Captain said, sort of like a lizard.”

You down the remainder of your drink and gesture for Sasha to pour you another one. 

“I’m not your bar wench, Eren.”

“I have ice on my knee. I can’t move.” You lean back into the cushions, eyes half-closed. “It’s nice, though. That wine. Tastes nice.”

Someone enters, and it takes you a moment to realise it’s Armin.

“Who the fuck are you?” Jean asks, but he’s grinning as he speaks. He slaps Armin on the back, making the other boy fall forward slightly. “Handsome bastard.”

Armin’s hand rushes to his neck, then his hair, which he brushes back self-consciously. He’s cut it short, to just above his ears, and it’s only then that you realise he looks so much older, that his cheekbones have gotten higher, and most the fat from around his cheeks and eyes has lessened. His eyes don’t look quite so big anymore, and you find yourself a little sad about that, although you’re not quite sure why. 

“Wow,” says Sasha. “You look more like a guy.”

“Thanks.” He returns flatly. 

“Who cut it?”

“Hitch. Said she couldn’t bear the sight of it before, something about me looking like her eight-year-old niece.”

“She’s not bad at it,” Jean says. He pauses. “Maybe you can get her to do Eren’s while you’re at it. It’s getting longer than Mikasa’s.”

“I don’t know. I quite like it long.”

“It makes you look like your dad.” Mikasa says quietly.

“Is there something wrong with that?”

“No, I guess.” She pauses. “It’s just… weird.”

“Your hair’s gotten longer, too, Mikasa.” Jean adds. His eyes skim briefly over her face. “Like when we first joined.”

“Maybe I should cut it.”

“No! I like it. I mean, you can cut it if you want. But I think it looks nice. You could have it up, like Sasha.”

“I don’t know. What do you think, Eren?”

You take another sip of wine. It burns the back of your throat and without thinking you take a strand of her hair between your fingers. It’s soft, softer than yours, and seems to slip from your fingers like water. You don’t register Mikasa pulling away, turning her face away, until you realise you’ve already embarrassed her. 

“I guess I like it shorter,” you shrug, “but both are nice.”

“It’s been so long since you had it long,” says Armin. “It reminds me of when we were kids.”

“We were kids when you cut it. We were only twelve. Just a bunch of stupid kids, really.”

“You say that like you’re not still a stupid kid.” Jean quips.

“You’re the same age as me.”

“Yeah,” he replies, tapping his temple with his forefinger. “But I make up for that with my mental maturity.” 

From the other side of the room, Sasha snorts. “Weren’t so mentally mature the other night in the tavern, though, were you? You only had a couple beers down you when you decided you were in love with the bar maid.”

“She was looking at me the whole night!”

“Speaking of,” you interrupt. “Is there any of that wine left? Can I have a little more?”

“It’s her wine, you shouldn’t drink it all.” Mikasa says.

“It’s not, actually.” Sasha admits. “I found it downstairs. There’s bottles and bottles of them. You can help yourself, Eren.” 

“Do you really need a third?” 

“It’s fine,” you reply lightly. “I just like the taste. I’m not even tipsy.” And you’re being honest.

“It’s true,” Connie says. “Yeager was born with a liver crafted by the gods. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him wasted.”

“Maybe it’s a titan shifter thing.”

“Doesn’t happen with me.” Armin says with a shrug. 

“It’s because you always have a drink with your dinner. And then two more before bed. Sometimes three.” Mikasa continues, and her voice is flat. She doesn’t look at you. For a moment, nobody speaks. Amazingly, it’s Jean who breaks the tension.

“I’m convinced he’s found a way to cheat.” He says. “Wouldn’t put it past him.”

“You’re really upset about losing that drinking contest, aren’t you?” You reply. “Well, keep crying. You’ll piss less.”

The next day, Mikasa has cut her hair far shorter, until it dangles around her ears. Jean tells her he likes it, that the short, boyish style suits her. You don’t comment on it. 

* * *

_Not God but a swastika_  
_So black no sky could squeak through._  
_Every woman adores a Fascist,_  
_The boot in the face, the brute_  
_Brute heart of a brute like you._

* * *

“Look! She won’t even look at you, she’s going right after little Grice!”

Before you are fields of sand, rising and falling like hills, endless and desolate, after from the great, lumbering creatures wondering away from them, their mottled flesh almost golden in the late afternoon light. There is a long, painful pang radiating from the pit of your stomach. The voice behind you is familiar. “Guess she had a thing for him after all.”

“Shut up.” The words come out without you even thinking. 

“Did you just say something?”

“It was you… fifteen years ago…”

No. This is not you. These are not your memories. There’s something almost perverse about being here. Something voyeuristic. 

You stare out at the titan receding on the distance. Lumbering. Mindless. As good as dead. 

Dead. Dead. Dead. Like the desert. 

You’re speaking, but somehow, whatever is coming out of your mouth is incomprehensible gibberish. The man with his back to you replies, also in gibberish. The man you’re shouting at has sleek, dark hair that clings to the nape of his neck. 

“Is he the last one?” Someone else says. 

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay. Let me handle him.”

“Yes, sir.”

The soldiers filter away, some smoking cigarettes, all chatting to one another absently, like they didn’t just spend the past eight hours kicking people off a wall until they collapsed into mindless beasts, doomed to wander, alone and trapped in their mind, groping for flesh to guzzle. An endless nightmare. 

But why would they worry about that, anyway? They were just following orders, and that was all most people ever did, anyway, just to keep a roof over the heads of their children. They would leave from tossing human beings into an indescribable nightmare to their wife, around a table of freshly prepared food.

_—How was work?_

_—Fine. The usual._

They fussed over their ailing parents, worried about getting old themselves. They scolded their children when they were bad, they told them to try harder in school. They hoped that someday, at the very least, they would be happy. The truth is, monsters aren’t unknowable, they’re mundane, with their own hopes and desires and insecurities. And that’s the thing about them which is most horrifying.

The only ones who are left are you, and the two soldiers on the either side of you, one still with his back to you. You look up at the other one, smoking a cigarette as he stares off into the middle distance. A thin, slightly haggard face and solemn eyes, with stringy brown hair that fell in his eyes. You feel a gleam of dull recognition. Your namesake. 

_Why am I doing this? Because it’s fun, that’s why._

The man on the other side won’t look at you. 

“Do you regret it?” You ask instead. The soldier shrugs. 

“It felt like the only option at the time.”

You look up at Eren Kruger, expecting him to do something, but he doesn’t move, just keeps looking off at the creature who used to be Dina, lumbering off into the distance. 

_Get a good look at that. That’s who you people really are. You think you’re just as human as us?_

“You’re monsters in human skin,” he says, after a while, but he’s not looking at you, he’s looking off at the other soldier. “It’s terrifying anyone ever let you reproduce.”  
Something about this is wrong—it’s not playing out how it’s supposed to.

You can see the soldier take out the needle, flicking it a couple of times to get rid of air bubbles. 

_All of humanity wishes for the same thing. To wipe out all Eldians. You’re the killers here. What were you Marleyans trying to do to Paradis?_

You tear your gaze away from the back of his neck and stare down below you, at the unmoving sand. You close your eyes and think of your mother, the steps of the soldier getting closer and closer. 

“It’s a shame, really.” The soldier says. “Beyond a shame. No parent can ever dream their child will become a monster.”

“You made me like this.”

“Yes. I suppose I did.”

Your eyes are still screwed shut. Why won’t he do it. 

“I hate you.” You say, not caring how childish you sound. 

“No, you don’t. This is what you wanted, wasn’t it? To be all powerful?”  
He’s right, and you hate when he does that. A prick in your forearm followed by a swift kick, and all of a sudden you’re falling, falling, falling—

* * *

_You stand at the blackboard, daddy,_  
_In the picture I have of you,_  
_A cleft in your chin instead of your foot_  
_But no less a devil for that, no not_  
_Any less the black man who_

_Bit my pretty red heart in two._  
_I was ten when they buried you._  
_At twenty I tried to die_  
_And get back, back, back to you._  
_I thought even the bones would do._

* * *

Beneath your fingers are soft, cotton sheets, that contort and twist with each movement of your body. There is a hand in yours, soft, probably a girl’s—Mikasa presumably. 

“I—I can’t see…” you whimper, overcome by that childish fear of the dark. In the refugee camps, the dark was where bad things happened, the dark was where men came to rummage and steal what they could from vulnerable refugees. Once you heard a story about gangs of cannibals that went down burning down tents, killing and eating the occupants, because there was no food to eat, and people were desperate. But that was probably just a story. 

“It’s alright,” a voice says—Mikasa. Many would consider her voice cold and aloof, but in that moment it’s like the sweet, sugary cough syrup your mother used to give you when you got ill. “We were pulling you out of your titan form and it… it got messy. You lost your eyes. And a lot of your face.”

Reflexively, a hand juts out to touch your face. The fingers haven’t grown back fully yet, but you can still feel the sensation of bare, fleshy muscle, unsheathed by skin. Your mouth has grown back, just about, well enough to speak, but the rest of your body still hisses and steams, in the tedious process of stitching itself together. 

You should be dead. You should be very dead. 

Outside Paradis, they tell stories of a man called Lazarus, who was resurrected by the son of God after four days, from the depths of a stony tomb. Lazarus was resurrected for his virtue, for his unwavering belief in Him, neither which traits you possess. Still, every time, you’ve roared back to life when you should have been dead. 

Perhaps, this, these memories flashing before your eyes, crashing and melting into one another, is a sign that this time, it’s truly the end. 

* * *

_But they pulled me out of the sack,_  
_And they stuck me together with glue._  
_And then I knew what to do._  
_I made a model of you,_  
_A man in black with a Meinkampf look_

* * *

_Whose memories are these?_

You’re not sure. But you are a child again, with your hand in your fathers, winding through shrubbery and trees, away from, put not too far from, the hustle and bustle of the refugee camps.  
One foot in front of the other—you fixate on the ground. Dust and dirt clogging your cheaply made shoes. Your father squeezes your hand and there is a selfish part of you that wishes to run as far away as you possibly can, because then maybe that injection would get jabbed into somebody else and everything could have been different. Maybe. 

You look up at your father and you want to scream and cry, even though you know it would be selfish, because this is about more than you—but it’s still not fair. You want to scream, to bite and thrash, but you can’t move, your legs continually moving forward without your consent. 

_Why didn’t you protect me?_ You want to shout. _Why didn’t you protect me from the Military Police? From the outside world? From the refugee camps, the excruciating process of having your body piece itself together from death, from the merchant from Wall Rose with a fetish for little boys?_

* * *

_And a love of the rack and the screw._  
_And I said I do, I do._  
_So daddy, I’m finally through._  
_The black telephone’s off at the root,_  
_The voices just can’t worm through._

* * *

The taste of fabric stuffed in your mouth makes you want to gag.

It’s really not the thing you should be the most worried about, but you can’t help it. Perhaps it’s a Pavlovian response to having your mouth stuffed to prevent you from escaping, or maybe it’s just that you like being able to breathe properly. 

Still, it’s better than the alternative. You’d rather not attract attention here, of all places; if they found you screaming bloody murder while severing through your lower thigh probably wouldn’t earn you the right kind of attention.

You spent the past half an hour sharpening the knife until, with just the slightest press of the edge into your thumb, a great bead of blood appears and swells like a fruit.   
The first inch or so in barely hurts at all. I mean, you do have a notoriously high pain tolerance, but regardless, it’s not so bad. Probably from keeping the knife sharp. Small mercies. 

So, you drive it in further, and that’s when blood starts flowing sluggishly, and yes, it starts to hurt. It really fucking hurts. You bite down harder on the piece of fabric until your jaw is sore and it’s almost enough to stop you from cringing from the feeling of cold, hard metal and wet flesh. 

You must have struck an artery, because that’s when blood starts to spurt, first into your face, then dribbling down your shirt, hot and thick.

Your eyes are hot and wet; you didn’t even register the feeling of tears springing to your eyes. 

When you were fourteen you broke your arm practising with the manoeuvre gear, sending calf-first into the thick trunk of a passing tree. Mikasa’s voice, panicked, registers before the pain even did, that shrillness it would take on when she was legitimately scared—

The knife hits bone and all of a sudden, the pain is white hot, beyond anything you’ve felt before. Your body throws everything your reflexes have in their arsenal in an attempt to make it stop, then your hand stiffens and slips slightly, revealing a smooth expanse of bone, like marble. From the moment we are born our body is enslaved by our desire to live, we cry and twitch and laugh to elicit care, because we needed to—because we needed to live. 

Bone is tough, unsurprisingly. You pause, which is a mistake, because then you can think about how much it fucking hurts; the kind of pain that is all-encompassing, the kind of pain that spreads to every inch of your body, the kind of pain that pulsates, like a beating heart.   
But you keep driving it forward, you keep—

* * *

_If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two——_  
_The vampire who said he was you_  
_And drank my blood for a year,_  
_Seven years, if you want to know._  
_Daddy, you can lie back now._

* * *

Sometimes, even as a child, you found yourself dreaming about faces and people that you’ve never met. You still remember waking up—just a few months before the fall of Shiganshina—your head filled with the image of a great animal made of metal, that moved on wheels and spat out steam.

Perhaps time is not as simple as we like to believe, perhaps time is fluid; perhaps time doesn’t travel down a simple, linear path, but bends back on itself, everything seeping into everything else—everything happening at once—again and again.

That was why you were troubled by so many bad dreams, even then, before everything went wrong. You dreamt you were wondering in a forest, groping around for light you couldn’t see; you dreamt of being stared down at by men in polished coats and grins like wolves, dogs on leash, then the dogs descending on you and ripping into your flesh.   
Maybe even now, this is all just a nasty dream, your mother will shake you awake, and you will have never been as happy to be bored again. 

These are the same as the electrical signals that sizzle through you now, and now, that everything that has ever happened to you, seems to be happening all at once.   
This is what dying feels like, the final waves of neurotransmitters splashing through each synapse, in a desperate attempt to live. Your body, always so insistent on survival, even when your brain had long given up. 

Onyankopon said he believes there’s a greater power, one more almighty than the Founder, one who created every race on this Earth, making them different to keep things interesting. If there is a divine power greater than Ymir, you hope, for your own sake, that’s they’re merciful.

* * *

_There’s a stake in your fat black heart_  
_And the villagers never liked you._  
_They are dancing and stamping on you._  
_They always knew it was you._  
_Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through._

**Author's Note:**

> I like feedback.  
> Please drop a comment or kudos if you enjoyed.


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